The Five Stages of Grief
by S. Faith
Summary: Mark's world falls down around him in stages. EOR movie universe, with a very little bit of book universe sprinkled in.


**The Five Stages of Grief**

By S. Faith, © 2008

Words: 2.932

Rating: T / PG-13

Summary: Mark's world falls down around him in stages.

Disclaimer: Would happily take it all off of Ms Fielding's hands, but I doubt she'd give it to me. So I have to pretend. A lot.

Notes: "The Kübler-Ross model describes, in five discrete stages, the process by which people deal with grief and tragedy…. These steps do not necessarily come in… order…, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though… a person will always experience at least two." -- Source: Wikipedia.

* * *

I. Denial.

Mark awoke, blinking sun from his eyes, and out of habit reached a splayed hand to his right. It met not with a warm body but with cold, undisturbed sheets, and that was when he remembered: _she left me_.

He sighed, the whole horrible exchange flooding back to him in an instant. He closed his eyes, feeling a cold knot in the pit of his stomach. He should have gone after Bridget, should have tried to talk to her and hammer out this obvious misunderstanding, but he had not. She just needed time to calm down.

It was nothing; he was sure of it. She'd call at lunchtime, she'd apologise, and they'd be laughing about the whole thing over dinner… and making up afterwards.

But she never rang at lunch, never called to tell him any number of inconsequential things during the course of the business day as he'd gotten used to her doing; every time the phone rang he hoped it would be her, and felt an odd resentment towards the caller for not being her.

_Okay_, he thought, _so she needs more time._ Surely she'd think about her outburst in a rational light, realise she had been unreasonable, and she'd call. He missed her, but it wasn't over yet. Just needed more time.

Dinner seemed pathetically sad and funereally quiet. They'd just have to laugh about this over dinner the next night.

Or the next.

It took him longer than was healthy to realise that she wasn't going to call.

* * *

II. Bargaining.

He carried it everywhere he went, her key. Mark would stick his hand into his trouser pocket and hold it, as if to hold out some remaining hope; sometimes he would absently reach in, forgetting it was there, and be surprised to find his fingertips meeting metal, reminding him of her absence all over again. He realised she must have been upset at Rebecca's message, but the leap of logic from a message from a concerned friend, to an affair, bespoke of a total lack of trust. This blatant comparison of himself to the likes of Daniel Cleaver wounded his pride enough to prevent him from picking up the phone to talk to her, but he held out hope that she would contact him. _I'll do whatever it takes to be the man she wants me to be_, he thought. _Just let her call, just let her see me._

At the same time, he tried, really tried, to see things from her point of view. He'd even read one of her highly-touted self-help books. It lent incredible insight into the way she thought of relationships and men. He also gradually began to understand how an innocent thing like an answerphone message could snowball in her mind into infidelity. After all, if all the men in her life had been like Daniel, she had come to expect it.

On a Saturday in April, he got his wish. She had been asked to be the godmother of his law partner's newest offspring; he, the godfather. He'd spent the whole baptism avoiding her gaze, wanting to seem approachable but not too eager, but she seemed to be avoiding his gaze as well. _To hell with pride_, he thought at last, deciding to find her after the ceremony was over. They were going to talk. He came across her looking for her mobile (he had almost forgotten how prone she was to misplacing it), had picked it up as she called it to locate it, almost like it'd been fate that he'd been there to answer it. They then turned to face one another, the totality of their awkwardness palpable even though she seemed pleased to see him; he almost did it, almost swallowed his pride, deciding to completely set aside the trust issue, when her phone rang again.

He happened to still have it in his hand. Out of habit, he supposed, he answered it. When he heard the voice on the other end of the line, he felt bewilderment set in… followed by intense anguish.

He did not understand how she could so clearly be in contact with a man, be going to dinner with a man who had without question hurt her—cheated on her with another woman and slept with Mark's own wife while purporting to be Mark's best friend—yet had excised Mark so cleanly from her life based on a mere suspicion.

She took the phone from his hand, cut the call short in an apologetic _not in front of him_ manner, but in that brief span of time he had become resolute.

Rather than open up to her only to be roundly rejected, rather than appeal to a woman who evidently had no intention of apologising to him, he took the key he'd so carefully kept with him from his pocket, handed it back to her as if that were the only reason he'd approached her, then left for his car. It was the best he could think of on such short notice.

As days passed, he found he missed the key, found himself reaching for it when it wasn't there. More than that, having lost his last connection to his life with her, he felt completely exiled.

* * *

III. Depression.

He hadn't called his mother in over a week. He hadn't realised this until she'd called him, her voice brimming with concern. He told her he was fine, but he could tell she didn't believe him. She knew too much about the secret corners of his heart, had been too good a confidant and mother to not know he was still not over Bridget.

He was not likely to be for some time.

At the office, Rebecca chuckled, playfully pointing out that his hair had grown long enough to brush against his collar easily. He promptly made an appointment for later that same day to get it trimmed. At work, he preferred not to wear his heart on his sleeve in such a way.

It was hard to believe time continued to briskly pass with so few landmark moments. The days began to slide together; life was just about getting up, throwing himself into his work, and going to bed to begin again the next day.

He preferred to be busy, professionally. It afforded him fewer opportunities to think about her, to think about the little details that had barely registered during his time with her because they had become haunting reminders of what he no longer had, emphasising how desperately lonely he was.

He frequently caught himself thinking what she would say or do when faced with certain situations; he missed turning to her with his own dry commentary, and hearing her giggle in return. It felt oddly strange to wake and not find her eyes upon him in that slightly unnerving yet endearing way she had, even some weeks later. He missed her lack of pretense, the way a pizza in front of the fireplace was preferable to a night at a posh restaurant. He had come to dread going home at night for the stark emptiness of his cavernous home. He missed the loving touches, the tender kisses, the way she could fire him up with a simple look. He especially missed the feel of her in his arms, the soft sighs she made as he pleasured her. The thought of sex with another woman was impossible to contemplate, not when she had set the bar so high. No woman registered in his thoughts as beautiful, charming, witty or sexy; they merely registered as Not Bridget.

He found he missed her annoying habits most of all: sneaking a smoke in the loo when she thought he didn't know; her obsession with calorie counts, alcohol units and attempting to reduce a weight he found perfect; being consistently late to every date they arranged. While she could annoy, even anger him at times, a simple smile was all it took to win him over; he missed that, too.

He even missed her crazy friends a little bit, even if they did think he was a boring arse.

When he thought he couldn't feel any worse, or at least any differently, he'd caught a promotion on her station for a new show; she was now working in close quarters with the very devil who'd once broken her heart and had ruined his own marriage. It added insult to injury.

* * *

IV. Anger.

He found himself apologising. A lot.

The people he snapped at would always tell him it was all right, but it wasn't. They would always brush it aside, because they knew, or at least suspected, he was still smarting from the break; even though he was, no one deserved to be caught in his crosshairs.

_Accused me of an affair; how could she trust me so little? I did nothing wrong._

He kept telling himself this. It didn't help him feel any better, only more irate.

The day he'd actually seen her having lunch at a little sidewalk café with him, looking all too comfortable, too _happy_, to be with him, coupled with the news of their traveling together to Thailand for the show, he did something when he got home that he instantly regretted: he took a framed photo she'd given him, of the two of them in the first blush of love on New Year's Day, and threw it down hard on the wooden floor, shattering the glass, destroying the frame. He stared at it for a few moments, surprised at his outburst, before picking up the tattered remains of the photo. He brushed the dust off and with great care put the photo into the nearest book at hand, which, ironically enough, was _Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus_.

_Bloody hell, _he thought, cursing a continually cruel universe.

It was bad enough to be so filled with simmering fury over the fact she'd chosen Cleaver over him. What made it worse was that a good portion of his rage was directed at himself for the heinous crime of still loving her, despite everything.

It was a call from one of Bridget's friends, coincidentally enough, that helped him to channel his choler in a more productive way. He learned from Sharon that Bridget had been detained in Thailand on a drug charge. He knew she couldn't have been a willing participant, knew he couldn't let her languish in a prison halfway around the world, and so he got to work to free her. He told himself he would have done it for any friend, but deep down he knew he was fooling himself.

He saw her for the second time since their split while she was in prison, in the course of trying to set her free. He preferred to blame his exhaustion, from jumping from country to country trying to track down the mysterious 'Jed', for being less than kind to her when he saw her. After hearing reports that she'd spent the night in Cleaver's hotel room, keeping his composure would have taken more effort than he was capable of mastering in his current state, anyway.

Of one thing he was certain. He would never let her have the satisfaction of knowing how hard he'd worked on her behalf, because the last thing he wanted was her gratitude. Her pity.

It wasn't until after he assured her freedom that Sharon shared a troubling detail with him: that she had seen Cleaver watch Bridget be led off by the police, and while Sharon had been unable to deplane once on, Cleaver had done nothing, simply gotten onto the plane anyway.

He was jet-lagged, exhausted and bereft of good judgment, so it was therefore understandable that when he went to the gallery where Cleaver happened to be filming with his camera crew, Mark should want to punch him in the face. Repeatedly.

* * *

V. Acceptance.

It was Cleaver's confession at the end of Mark's fist (figuratively speaking), while standing in enough water to drown the bastard should it come to that, that had sent Mark's world sideways and into a tailspin, leaving him bewildered beyond reason: Cleaver had not gotten anywhere with Bridget, not in Thailand, not since she'd left Mark. She wasn't with Daniel.

But she wasn't with Mark, either. He would have noticed.

It didn't take him long to realise maybe it wasn't a choice she made between men, but rather, a choice she made against them, against _him_. Maybe she really just didn't love him anymore.

Something else Cleaver said set him to thinking: _Why don't you just marry her?_ Of course, Cleaver had then continued with an insult, but the words resounded in his head. Marry her. After his disastrous first marriage he was sure he'd never marry again; after meeting her, getting to know her, falling in love with her, he had certainly considered proposing, but the time had never been quite right. Now that he had no future opportunities, he realised he should have popped the question when he'd had the chance. He had never loved a woman as much as he loved her, even so many weeks after she'd left him.

After this revelation, he fell back into his routine, only this time the sadness was joined with a sense of resignation. It was really over. She had moved on. He would have to as well, even though he was sure his days would be grey for some time, that he would never again feel the sort of joy he'd had with her. Work was his comfort for the time being, and the bigger the case, the more he had to do, the more he could distract himself from his fate.

_Maybe_, he thought with a bitter laugh, _I'll die alone, half-eaten by Alsatians._

He'd managed to land one of the biggest cases of his career, the culmination of which coincided on the day he knew she'd be returning from Thailand. It was somehow fitting. He was deep in conference with the Peruvians and a million miles away from his lonely life on Holland Park Avenue when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Figuring it must have been Giles with the papers he had left behind at the office, he called him to enter.

His brain failed to properly process what he saw at first. It was not Giles at all. It was Bridget, dressed in a pretty floral dress, though she looked as though she'd been caught in the recent downpour. He could do nothing but blink in disbelief as he listened to what she said, and he realised with a sickening dread that she had somehow found out what he had done for her. A reluctant relationship based on indebtedness was the last thing he wanted.

He was too focused on his own thoughts to truly hear what she was saying until three words penetrated his consciousness:

_I love you._

His head snapped up to look at her in surprise, sure he was hearing things, but as she continued to speak he realised he had not misheard after all.

When she stopped talking, his surroundings came back into sharp focus all at once: the Peruvians, the conference, work, Inns of Court. Propriety as well as reason kicked in and he strode forward to take her out of the room, wondering what in the world he was going to say when he got her out there.

And then he knew.

He strove for a casual tone, all the while his heart pounded so loudly in his chest he thought it would start to echo down the length of the hallway. After saying he had a question to ask her, she interjected in her typical fashion with a completely inappropriate response:

"As long as it isn't 'Will you marry me?'"

He hadn't even asked the question, and he'd been rejected.

But then he watched a look of mortification cross her face, one that likely mirrored his own, as she realised that was exactly what he'd intended to ask. He was still recovering from the refusal when she made to rewind the scene and as she stood there, her eyes bright, her locks bedraggled, it occurred to him that she _wanted_ him to ask her.

He did.

When she ran to him and threw her arms around him, when she reared her head back to kiss him, he felt like he was awakening from a months-long nightmare. It was not a rejection, not a rejection at all. More like a miracle.

He didn't want to let go of her, not after so much time away from her, but he had to, if only to finish up the meeting he'd left behind. And then another miracle occurred: Giles showed up with the papers. Mark asked him to step in and take over, and with a smirk Giles said he would be happy to. He made a strange comment about having seen Bridget practising a snog earlier that afternoon; Bridget turned a little pink and promised she'd explain later.

It was much, much later when she finally got around to explaining. By that time, as he held her in his arms, her bare skin up against his own as they laid amidst the tousled bed sheets, she could have admitted to robbing the Crown Jewels and he wouldn't have cared.

When he woke, he caught her staring at him. Rather than deliver the stern lecture she was so clearly expecting, he could only smile and think, _All is right with the world._

_The end._


End file.
